]]>It’s nearly a month since Nepal was rocked by the first of two earthquakes, and humanitarian and faith-based groups like World Vision continue to be faced with major challenges, including severely damaged infrastructure, cold temperatures, and the possibility of disease, flooding, and even more earthquakes. Another important concern is deciding how to allocate limited resources to help thousands of victims. “You’re surrounded by people with their hands out, and they’re desperate, and to turn somebody down who may not be in a life-threatening situation to get somebody who is can create tension. You have to handle that diplomatically,” says Kent Hill of World Vision US.

]]>In 1994, ethnic tensions in Rwanda culminated in one hundred days of killing, in which nearly one million Tutsi men, women and children were killed by their Hutu neighbors. Now, two decades later in the largely Christian country, many perpetrators are being released from prison and seeking forgiveness from those they traumatized. The Christian charity World Vision has brought together thousands of pairs of victims and assailants in small groups, encouraging restoration through building houses and planting trees for survivors. “I see real reconciliation is taking place, and it’s not fake. It’s genuine,” says Josephine Munyeli, a peace and reconciliation expert for World Vision. “You cannot fake reconciliation. You can’t.”

FRED DE SAM LAZARO, correspondent: At eight a.m. each day, the weigh-in begins at a regional health center. Babies are weighed and the girth of their arms is also measured, a color-coded proxy for malnutrition. There’s still the odd green, or normal. Children in the yellow zone are most common. In a few weeks many more will fall, like Amina, into the red. More tests followed to assess her condition before Amina was transferred to the emergency feeding center 10 miles away. It’s near capacity, and the medical supervisor expects they’ll begin pitching expansion tents much earlier this year.

DR. HASSAN AOUADE: In May, our admissions were up more than ten percent from 2011, and that usually means our June and July will be really bad. The peak is usually in August.

DE SAM LAZARO: Ironically, the frequency, the very routineness of such crises could contain the damage in Niger this year, certainly compared to the last famine in 2010.

BISA WILLIAMS (U.S. Ambassador to Niger): This is not like the situation in 2010. I think we are better prepared, and I think it is because the government of President Issoufou really did alert the community very early. They sounded the alarm as far back as October, September of last year.

DE SAM LAZARO: Unlike earlier governments, which denied or downplayed famines, Williams says President Mahamadou Issoufou, elected to office early in 2011, has declared food security a top priority.

PRESIDENT MAHAMADOU ISSOUFOU: I remember the first big drought in 1973-74. Then again in 1984 we had another one. Since then, the time between droughts has been getting shorter, and I believe this is attributable to climate change.

DE SAM LAZARO: The president said he wants to take Niger beyond its chronic food emergencies.

PRESIDENT ISSOUFOU: That’s why we have created the 3N initiative—Nigeriens helping Nigeriens. It’s a structural response to the food crises that are consistently linked with our recurrent droughts. We are convinced that drought does not need to mean famine.

DE SAM LAZARO: A key part of the 3N program is to expand a greening initiative that began two decades ago. This former French colony is land-locked. The Sahara lies in the north, and it has steadily crept south, turning farmland—arid to begin with—into desert. International aid groups like World Vision have led the effort, sharing the president’s goal of going beyond humanitarian aid.

MICHEL DIATTA (World Vision): If you see the humanitarian response, it just come and respond to a need. But the long-term programming is something that really matters for World Vision. That is why FMNR is one of these initiatives that is mainstream in all of our programs.

DE SAM LAZARO: FMNR stands for Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration. It begins on barren patches like these, where World Vision and others have launched temporary employment projects.

ABDOULAYE SALEY: They give us food to dig these holes. We get four kilos of maize and six kilos of beans. This land is very dry, and they told us it will have trees. We can have better crops and fodder for our animals.

DE SAM LAZARO: The shallow, half-moon shaped depressions they’re digging trap rain water and tree seeds. It’s hard to imagine anything sprouting in such conditions. But in non-drought years there’s just enough rain to transform the land, and it’s already happened in a wide swath of southern Niger.

CHRIS REIJ: If you look around you, not a single tree that you see here has been planted. It’s all coming from seed stock in the soil, or coming from trees that were cut in the past, and the root system is still alive, and given chance to emerge, it will grow, or from seeds from the manure that livestock deposited here.

DE SAM LAZARO: The trees have kept desert sand storms at bay and returned land to productivity, says Chris Reij, a Dutch scientist who has worked in this region since the 1970s.

(speaking to Chris Reij): So this is a crop, it doesn’t look like much because it looks like it’s coming out of a desert.

REIJ: This is millet, which is one of the main crops here. And it has just been sown probably two weeks ago. But in three months time, it will be about one and a half to two meters high, and this whole field will be lush green.

DE SAM LAZARO: In the old days he says farmers used to clear their fields of trees or sapling. Under colonial laws, trees were state property, seen as a timber or forestry resources. Drought and rapid population growth added to the cutting, creating a virtual desert visible in this 1975 U.S. Geological Survey satellite picture.

World Vision Video: The leaves on the soil will protect the crop from drought. It will hold the moisture in the soil. Too easy!

DE SAM LAZARO: Chris Reij and a colleague, Tony Rinaudo, began championing agroforestry and a model for protecting trees on farmland that they saw practiced by a farmer in Burkina Faso, Niger’s western neighbor. Their work was picked up, among others, by World Vision, which produced this video. Farmers like Sakina Mati were employed to spread the word.

SAKINA MATI: We began using this technique in 2006, and it has worked well for us.

DE SAM LAZARO: One of the key goals was to dispel a commonly held notion that the payback is years away.

REIJ: Even in the first year you need to start pruning. The tree develops a trunk and starts developing a canopy, so even in the first year you already have some benefits—the leaves and some twigs that women can use as firewood in the kitchen. And by year two or three, certain trees will be taller than you and me.

DE SAM LAZARO: The leaves form livestock fodder and trap moisture in the soil. Improved soil fertility can mean better harvests, and already some villages have surpluses.

The surpluses have been gathered into a grain bank in Dansaga and about 20 other villages that are part of one aid group’s pilot project. Drought took a severe toll on the harvest last year, they say. But it hasn’t translated to famine.

WOMAN: The grain bank is helping us a lot. It is keeping our children fed until the harvest comes in.

REIJ: In a sea of difficulty, we find here examples where a surplus, a grain surplus, has been produced in the drought year 2011.

DE SAM LAZARO: Reij says Niger could some day become self-sufficient in food if villages like this are replicated on a large scale. But that “sea of difficulty” makes it daunting. Experts say it will require education and family planning. Literacy is just 30 percent, and the average woman bears seven children—a rate that will triple Niger’s population of 16 million by 2050, offsetting any gains in food production.

Then there are immediate, pressing needs of children like Amina. U.S. Ambassador Williams is optimistic Niger can make progress over the long term—also that a catastrophe can be avoided from this year’s famine. But she says it won’t be easy.

U.S. AMBASSADOR BISA WILLIAMS: There are at least 15 percent of children under two that are really, really hungry, so you are right, there is no magic bullet. It’s not—this is not something that has a quick fix to it. Development by its nature is a long-term process.

DE SAM LAZARO: For his part, President Issoufou says he’s acutely aware of Niger’s chronic neediness and of so-called donor fatigue.

PRESIDENT ISSOUFOU: I understand why donors would be tired of supporting our population. We ourselves are tired of needing the help, of not being able to feed our own people. For us in Niger, it’s a matter of shame not to be able to feed our children. That’s why we say: Please, don’t give us fish to eat. Teach us to fish for ourselves.

DE SAM LAZARO: Niger does have a head start. Remember the 1970s satellite picture? This one is from 2005. By Chris Reij’s count, Niger has grown 200 million trees over the past two decades—the only country in Africa to have actually added forest cover in the period.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro in Niamey, Niger.

]]>World Vision’s vice president for advocacy and government relations says the leaders attending this weekend’s G8 summit in Washington should invest in agricultural and nutrition programs to lift people out of poverty because “it’s the right thing to do, it’s the moral thing to do, and it’s the smart thing to do.” Watch excerpts from our May 16 interview. Produced by Patti Jette Hanley. Interviewed by Julie Mashack. Edited by Fred Yi.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: At the height of last year’s devastating famine in the Horn of Africa, Rajiv Shah, administrator of the US Agency for International Development, visited a refugee camp in Kenya. There were thousands of families who had walked for days to escape starvation in Somalia. He says one woman’s story particularly touched him.

DR. RAJIV SHAH (Administrator, US Agency for International Development): Along the way, she literally couldn’t continue to carry both of her kids, and she had to make this gut wrenching choice about which child she would carry to safety and which one she would leave behind, and that’s the kind of decision that no mother should ever have to make.

LAWTON: Shah says encounters like that bolster his conviction that the US has a moral obligation to help ease suffering around the world. It’s an obligation, he says, that’s also in America’s strategic interest.

SHAH: We’re a nation based on moral values, and when we express those values to communities around the world, we’re showing them an America that is an optimistic America, an inclusive America, and a country with whom they want to partner and not fight.

SHAH: We want to do our work, which is about protecting people who are vulnerable around the world and expanding the reach of human dignity, as broadly as possible. and often it is communities of faith, faith-based organizations, that are there working when the rest of the world has forgotten about people who have no other place to turn.

LAWTON: At 38, Shah is one of the Obama administration’s youngest top-ranking officials. He is Hindu and says his interest in humanitarian issues was first fostered by his parents, who immigrated to the US from India.

SHAH: When I was seven or eight years old, I don’t remember exactly when, I went to visit India, and they took me through slum communities just so I could see how people lived. And I grew up in suburban Detroit. I’d never been exposed to that before. And when you see other kids your age, when you’re seven or eight years old, living in entirely different circumstances, it affects you in a very profound way, and it has led to a constant motivation I’ve had.

LAWTON: Shah took over at USAID on January 7, 2010, just five days before the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti. He was immediately pulled into managing what would become the largest humanitarian response in history. After the quake, USAID worked closely with several faith-based organizations to provide food and shelter. Shah says he saw firsthand the effectiveness of those groups.

SHAH: Partners like World Vision or Catholic Relief Services that take the time to engage with communities they’re trying to serve, that are willing to be there for the long run, that work in partnership and cooperation with governments so that they are coordinating their efforts and getting the most out of what we—the investments we make.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA (delivering speech): I want to acknowledge one particular member of my administration who I’m extraordinarily proud of and does not get much credit, and that is USAID Administrator Dr. Raj Shah, who is doing great work with faith leaders. Where’s Raj? Where is he? There he is, right there.

LAWTON: Under Shah’s leadership, the Obama administration has increased its partnerships with religious groups by more than 50 percent. According to Shah, USAID now has 115 different partnerships with organizations of faith around the world, and he hopes to expand that even further.

LAWTON: What is it that faith groups bring to the table in these partnerships?

SHAH: Well, I think it’s a core motivation that’s driven by a desire to get results. Organizations that are committed to the outcomes, that measure results, that ensure that scarce taxpayer dollars are in fact benefiting those who are most vulnerable often are communities of faith, and we want to work with them to achieve those results.

LAWTON: Government partnerships with faith groups have been controversial. Some critics worry about the US being tied to the religious mission of a particular group or taxpayer money being used for explicitly religious activities, such as evangelizing.

SHAH: Those are not activities we support. You know, we have a very clear set of defined outcomes and results that we’re willing to finance and that we believe we can support, and, you know, frankly, if you look at the broad range of what faith community groups are doing around the world, it’s actually service.

LAWTON: Another controversial partner has been the military. Some nongovernmental groups have criticized the growing role of the US military in disaster relief, especially in areas where the US has been at war. But Shah says it can work. He cites Haiti as a model.

SHAH: Many of our NGO partners and others who had previously been sometimes nervous about working with the military came back and said, wow, they were, they were great to work with, they were so responsive to our needs and the needs of local communities and they were really there to serve. And I’m just very proud of the way American men and women in the armed services conducted themselves in Haiti, and they made us all proud.

LAWTON: Is there a concern, though, about the perception of the US humanitarian arm too linked with the military side?

SHAH: I don’t think we should be concerned about perceptions. I think we should be concerned about results and outcomes, and at times of crisis we will turn to whomever we can, whenever we can, to help save lives and protect people.

LAWTON: Shah says in an era of budget cutting, US faith leaders from across the religious and political spectrum have played an important role lobbying Congress to keep funding for programs that help the world’s poor.

SHAH: When people see that great coming together, it reminds us all that on some basic moral issues, we can stand together even in sometimes partisan environments.

LAWTON: But he admits in the current climate, it can be difficult to make the argument to maintain foreign aid funding, even though it represents less than one percent of the federal budget.

SHAH: At the end of the day when you ask Americans what we should be spending abroad, they’ll say about 10 percent of the budget. Unfortunately they believe we spend 20 percent and so we have a lot to do to communicate the fact that this is a relatively small investment.

LAWTON: Shah says resources must always be allocated for humanitarian disasters. But he says the administration wants to put a new focus on long-term initiatives as well.

SHAH: It turns out that for about a tenth the cost, somewhere between one-eighth and one-tenth the cost of feeding someone for a year, you can help invest in their ability to move themselves out of poverty.

LAWTON: And he says the government is well aware that communities of faith have vast potential resources that can be enlisted in the battle.

SHAH: There are 330,000 congregations in this country that represent–I think the top ten alone reach more than 100 million people. You know, if we could just reach a small fraction of that community, that’s our vision of success.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: It’s graduation time at the Helping Up Mission, a nondenominational Christian ministry for poor and homeless men in Baltimore. On this day, several men are being recognized for reaching new stages of success in their recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. Helping Up believes that spirituality plays a key role in the recovery process, and it wants those who work there to reflect its values. The ministry relies largely on private donations, but it has received some public funding as well, and that raises a difficult question: If the mission takes government money, should it still be allowed to only hire people who share its religious beliefs?

BOB GEHMAN (Executive Director, Helping Up Mission): A faith-based organization is only faith-based if it can hire people of the particular faith that it espouses, so if, for instance, we were not able to discriminate in our hiring practices based on our faith and religion, that would change us.

BARRY LYNN (Executive Director, Americans United for Separation of Church and State): I don’t think that there’s any moral or ethical or constitutional justification for a religious group taking government funds, tax dollars, and saying we’re only going to hire the people we want, we’re going to have a religious litmus test for hiring. That’s dead wrong, and it should be stopped.

LAWTON: For decades, religious groups have been partnering with the government to provide a host of social services in the US and around the world. Those partnerships attracted new visibility—and new controversy—after President George W. Bush created his faith-based initiative—

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: People who don’t have hope can find hope.

LAWTON: —in his words “to level the playing field” so that more religious groups could compete for government grants.

A series of laws, regulations and court decisions have tried to ensure that the faith-based partnerships don’t violate the Constitution. For example, tax dollars may not be used to fund proselytizing. But the issue of religious hiring remains one of the most contentious questions. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its regulations banned discrimination in hiring but granted faith groups an exemption, allowing them to hire on the basis of religion. But Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, says federal funding should change the calculus.

LYNN: Whenever government money enters the picture, then the civil rights rubric of our country is you don’t get to discriminate anymore. If you’re engaged in federal work with federal money, you really have to play by the same rules as everyone else. You don’t get to be a bigot, you don’t get to discriminate, you don’t get to select people for a job or fire people from a job because of their religious beliefs or orientation.

LAWTON: Stanley Carlson-Thies heads the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance, which helps faith-based groups protect their identity and practices. He says the law allows religious groups to create an organizational philosophy as other federally funded entities do.

STANLEY CARLSON-THIES (Executive Director, Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance): I think the faith groups see it as, you know, like a Democratic senator hires Democrats for his or her office, and environmental groups hire environmentally sensitive people, and so on, and they say hey, we’re a faith group, it’s faith that motivates us, defines us, so we’re looking for people who are, share that faith.

LAWTON: Carlson-Thies sees this as an issue that pits an individual’s rights against institutional rights. He says for faith groups it’s not discrimination in the traditional sense.

CARLSON-THIES: It’s not that they think of this as you grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, we’re going to keep you out. No, it’s more do you share the things that motivate us? Do you have the same set of values? Do you have the same set of behaviors?

LAWTON: On the presidential campaign trail in July 2008, candidate Barack Obama visited a Christian youth program in Zanesville, Ohio, and promised that his administration would continue partnerships between faith-based groups and the government. But he said there would be a few caveats.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: First, if you get a federal grant you don’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help, and you can’t discriminate against them, or against the people you hire, on the basis of their religion.

LAWTON: When President Obama set up his White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, many civil rights groups expected to see all religious hiring preferences banned in federally funded programs. That hasn’t happened. Instead, Joshua DuBois, head of Obama’s faith office, has outlined a different course.

JOSHUA DUBOIS (White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, in speech): With regard to the issue of co-religionist hiring, hiring discrimination hiring, it’s a difficult topic and one that where there are very clear and strong opinions on both sides. The president has decided to take a case-by-case approach, and as difficult legal issues arise he wants me to work with the White House counsel, with the attorney general, to explore those issues and give him a recommendation.

LYNN: A case-by-case basis is like saying, well, maybe Rosa Parks may be in the front of the bus; other African-American women, they get into the back of the bus. There is no way to deal with fundamental civil rights issues on a case-by-case basis.

LAWTON: Both Carlson-Thies and Lynn were on a task force about government partnerships for Obama’s Faith Advisory Council. But the hiring question wasn’t allowed to even be part of the discussion. It’s an issue of deep concern for many faith-based charities, including Helping Up in Baltimore. The residential addiction recovery program has about 400 homeless addicts who live here for at least a year. They go through a 12-step program and receive counseling, medical help, job training, and Bible study. Executive director Bob Gehman says faith is crucial in the program’s effectiveness.

GEHMAN: Many of our men here have tried other programs, and they’ve come to us because they particularly like the faith-based ingredient that we have here. It offers them the kind of hope that they need in order to get beyond all the failures that they’ve had in the past.

LAWTON: That was the case for Michael Anthony Gross, who came here after three decades of cocaine and heroin addiction.

MICHAEL ANTHONY GROSS (Helping Up Mission): When I was in detox, I talked to a gentleman, and he recommended the Helping Up Mission, and he spoke about the spiritual basis that, you know, the program is run on, and I come to know that after all these years that’s what I was missing.

LAWTON: The mission’s internal surveys have found that two years out, almost 80 percent of the men who complete the program are still drug-free and employed. The program accepts men from all religious backgrounds, and leaders say religion isn’t imposed on anyone. The men may opt out of chapel or Bible study, but if they do they must attend another 12-step-style meeting. Tom Bond is Helping Up’s program director, who in 2002 came here himself as a homeless addict.

TOM BOND (Helping Up Mission): The whole faith and recovery both are highly unique. What we do is we just try to kind of create a platform and a vehicle for these guys to succeed and make things available to them and let them figure things out for themselves, not force it on them.

LAWTON: Gehman says the mission has been careful not to use any public money for the explicitly religious parts of the program. But he says hiring people who share the mission’s faith is central to maintaining its identity. If the government makes nondiscrimination a condition, they wouldn’t be able to accept public funding, and he says that would give other groups an unfair advantage.

GEHMAN: It really gives secular organizations a real power-edge, because they’re fully funded. They can build their buildings, they can develop their programs, and the faith-based organizations are left to have to raise their own money, which is becoming increasingly difficult.

LAWTON: Indeed, says Carlson-Thies, if the administration changed the longstanding policy, many charities from across the religious spectrum may be forced to end their partnerships with the government.

CARLSON-THIES: It’s not that we just say, well fine, if you want to walk away, walk away, because this implicates billions of dollars and a big volume of services.

LAWTON: One organization that might be affected is World Vision, the largest US-based relief and development group. World Vision has been taking federal funds since 1983 and last year received more than $300 million in cash and goods from the government. The Christian group wants to maintain the right to consider religion in its hiring. World Vision’s chief legal officer told me his organization has never discriminated among its recipients or engaged in illegal hiring practices. But, he said, if the policy changes and World Vision can no longer partner with the government, “the losers would be children in need around the world and American taxpayers.”

LYNN: Scientific studies certainly don’t prove that World Vision is the only group that can help the poor around the world, nor does it suggest that the best charities at home are those that have a religious title affixed to their name.

LAWTON: Under strong pressure from both sides, the Obama administration has been reluctant to clarify its position or make any changes, and White House officials declined to comment for this story as well. But with several court cases moving in the pipelines, the issue isn’t going away.

]]>BOB ABERNETHY, host: Faith-based and international aid groups rushed to help victims of the catastrophes in Japan. It’s estimated that more than 10,000 people were killed by the massive earthquake and tsunami. Japanese officials say more than 450,000 are homeless and in need of supplies. Humanitarian efforts, however, have been severely complicated by radiation from four of the country’s nuclear reactors.

We get more from Dave Toycen, the president and chief executive officer of the Christian aid group World Vision Canada. We spoke to him by phone from Tokyo on Friday night (March 18). Dave, thanks so much for staying up so late to talk with us. Are you and the others doing relief work there, are you able to get to all the people who need help, and do you have the supplies you need to help them?

DAVE TOYCEN (President and CEO, World Vision Canada): Well, basically we do. We’re anticipating we’ll be raising somewhere between $10 and $20 million, so our team here has already spent, you know, a chunk of that because they know it’s coming. But of course we believe we’re going to be able to raise that amount of money, and of course that turns into supplies and things that we can provide here. So, yes, I am positive about that.

ABERNETHY: But you are able to, or the people who are in need are able to get help from you or from the government or from somebody else, right?

TOYCEN: Yes, generally so. My perception is, in the conversations we’ve had, what I’ve seen first hand, people are getting at least the basics of life. That means water, food on a daily basis, and most people now are in schools, gymnasiums, community centers, so that they are at least not out in the elements. It was minus four this morning with about ten, well, eight inches of snow.

ABERNETHY: What have you seen that moved you the most?

TOYCEN: Well, I think one of the things that moves me so much is in every one of these centers they have sheets of paper with people either saying yes, I’m alive and I’m at this location. The other ones that are even more poignant are the ones where you read where people are saying I am looking for my son, my daughter, do you know about them? And that always touches your heart. That just really, really touches your heart. And today I had a mother say to me, you know, this has been awful, but it’s my kids. The fact that my kids are alive, and children are precious because they remind us that life is about hope, and even our children in the midst of these difficult circumstances they still find the time to be happy and joyful. That’s humbling.

ABERNETHY: Dave, very quickly, we are almost out of time, but a lot of people are saying, well, we don’t need to give anything because Japan is a first-world country. It’s well organized. They don’t need as much help as perhaps people at other places and other disasters. How would you respond to them?

TOYCEN: Well, my first comment is yes, you’re right to a certain extent. They don’t need as much help. This is a first-world country. But, on the other hand, my experience is that most of us, or many of us at least, when somebody’s in trouble we have a sense we want to help out in some ways. And then when you think about, even I think of. say. Hurricane Katrina in the United States, how much Americans appreciated, at least that’s the feedback I got, when people from Canada and other places in the world came in and pitched in and gave, either volunteered or gave some money. So I think everybody has to make their choice, and we’re so pleased at World Vision. We’ve had so many people who want to step up and say we’re willing to help in Japan and send a message of hope.

ABERNETHY: Dave Toycen of World Vision Canada. Many thanks.

Faith groups around the world held prayer services this week for victims of the disasters. Meanwhile, some observers have spoken about the strong cultural and spiritual resources the Japanese have displayed as they deal with the catastrophe. Reverend Maggie Izutsu is an Episcopal priest who is also an expert on Asian bereavement rituals. She lived in Japan for many years and joins us now from Austin, Texas, where she leads the organization the Rite Source. Maggie, welcome.

REV. MAGGIE IZUTSU: Thank you. It’s an honor to be here.

ABNERNETHY: As you see the way the Japanese people are responding to these tragedies, what stands out for you?

IZUTSU: I guess one of the things that my mind keeps going to is how they don’t ask the question “why me?” They’re not consumed with wondering what put them in harm’s way. They know they’re in harm’s way. They are very attentive to their surroundings, and they have a great reverence and fear of nature.

ABERNETHY: And so a disaster is just part of life? Multiple disasters are just part of life? You accept it and get on with things—pick up and continue you life?

IZUTSU: Yes, I believe so. I think that partly comes from their Shinto tradition of this reverence for nature and their understanding of the vicissitudes of nature and capriciousness of nature. It’s also part of their Buddhist tradition that understands that all things are impermanent and things are subject to change, and they don’t see themselves as entitled to good fortune all the time or even good fortune ever. Of course, they seek that and they strive for that, but that’s not their focus.

ABERNETHY: We’ve seen a little disruption—frustrations of trying to get supplies and things. But, in general, the images have been of people who are very orderly and very respectful of each other. Talk about that a little bit.

IZUTSU: Yes, well, I think that may come from very early training that is part and parcel of the Confucian tradition, which was imported from China, that seeks to make every opportunity in life—in daily life, secular life, as well as spiritual life or, more pointedly, religious life—an opportunity for moral self-cultivation, and it starts at a very early age. For instance, my son in a three-year-old’s class at nursery school’s teacher would talk about how she went home every night to try to understand how she could better inculcate a sense of little Johnny’s effect on little Tommy in terms of how he was behaving. So that sensibility of commiseration or empathy or understanding how our behavior affects other people starts there at a very early age.

ABERNETHY: And now there is the grieving and the rituals that are available, too, for helping people through that. What are the most important of those?

IZUTSU: The Buddhist tradition, as well as the new religions, have these very elaborate, very elongated memorial services—a sequence of memorial rites that go on literally ad infinitem, and they’re a wonderful occasion for families and friends of the deceased to come together at sporadic intervals to remember the deceased and share in the support that they can offer each other in that process. It also serves, I think, as a context for remembering the relative nature of our own egos, and the place that we have in this vast line of our ancestors and hopefully the progeny that will yet be coming, and to remember our place in society, and that also becomes a context for remembering that behaving well is a very important attribute of living.

ABERNETHY: Reverend Maggie Izutsu of the Rite Source in Austin, Texas. Many thanks.

Watch more of Sunday morning worship services at Parc Chretien Free Methodist Church; in a tent next to the ruined Roman Catholic Our Lady of the Assumption Cathedral; and in an open-air structure next to the destroyed Holy Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, and see more of correspondent Kim Lawton’s interviews with Rick Ireland, administrator of the Free Methodist Haiti Inland Mission, and Bishop Jean-Zache Duracin of the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti. Edited by R & E news researcher Emma Mankey Hidem.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: Driving through downtown Port-au-Prince, it’s difficult at first to see much change since we were last here nine months ago. The presidential palace is still in ruins. Thousands are living in a massive tent city across the street, and according to aid officials, more than a million Haitians are still homeless. Around the corner from the palace, people are living in tents on the grounds of the destroyed Roman Catholic cathedral. There, piles of rubble and broken stained glass still fill what was once a beautiful hundred-year-old sanctuary. But despite appearances, faith-based workers who have been active here over the past year insist there has been progress in dealing with this humanitarian catastrophe.

NICOLE PETER (Haiti Operations Director, World Vision): The progress is slow, maybe not as quick as other emergencies, but we’re moving forward.

LAWTON: Nicole Peter is the Haiti operations director for the Christian group World Vision, which has already spent more than $100 million in post-earthquake work. They’ve been involved in a variety of projects including shelter, water and sanitation, job creation, education, and family support. One example of their work is the Corail displaced persons camp on a windy, flood-prone field outside the capital city.

In April, the government of Haiti moved almost 7,000 people to this location about an hour outside Port-au-Prince. But there were no preparations. There were no essential services or infrastructure, so nongovernmental agencies had to step in to help the people. World Vision and other agencies provided sturdy tents to help withstand the elements. Groups brought in latrines and clean water and set up schools. The government still hasn’t developed a long-term housing and resettlement plan for the people here, so World Vision has begun building even sturdier transitional shelters.

MARY KATE MACISSAC (World Vision): We had to negotiate with donors to convince them that timber frames were necessary. They said that those were perhaps too permanent, but we said no, these people need something strong.

LAWTON: The houses are designed to last up to seven years. They can withstand winds up to 100 miles per hour, and in typical Haitian style they all have a front porch. One of the residents, Jeanne, invited me to sit on her front porch with several of the seven children who live here with her. She says she loves this house, and she’s grateful the kids are able to attend school. She says she’d like to get a small business going, so she can feed her children better.

Mary Kate MacIssac says there’s been a lot of criticism from the outside media—and even some donors—that more hasn’t been done. She’s also frustrated by the slow pace, but she says people don’t fully understand the realities on the ground.

MACISSAC: Haiti was a country that was facing humanitarian crisis even before the earthquake. Then you have a massive earthquake hit an urban center, the capital of a country, and it’s a complexity of urban disaster that agencies have not had to deal with before.

LAWTON: Adding to that complexity is a rising cholera epidemic. World Vision has set up cholera treatment units near various tent camps. Visitors are disinfected before they enter and when they leave. According to the official numbers, more than 150,000 people have now come down with cholera, and nearly 3,500 have died. Aid groups say the numbers are vastly under-reported. On this morning, 10 people have already been brought in for treatment, including a five-year-old boy who is also being treated for malnutrition.

PETER: It’s a new emergency within an emergency, so it’s basically heightening issues that existed previously.

LAWTON: Rick Ireland, administrator of the Free Methodist Haiti Inland Mission, is also all too familiar with the complexities here. After the earthquake hit, denominational officials asked him to get to Haiti immediately. The Free Methodist mission had suffered tragic losses. This multistory building on their compound was completely destroyed. The American administrator of the mission, Reverend Jeanne Munos, was killed. Two other American workers and a Haitian staffer also died in the collapse. Ireland had to oversee rubble removal, restore missions operations, and help coordinate relief and reconstruction.

REV. RICK IRELAND (Free Methodist Haiti Inland Mission): Everything is just a little bit harder here, and that does get discouraging.

LAWTON: The Free Methodists have been working through local churches like this one. Sunday morning services here start at 6 am. Shoe-shine vendors line up out front to help congregants look their Sunday best, while local taxis called “tap-taps” keep bringing more worshipers. With over 2,000 people, it’s standing room only. Ireland says this is the best resource to aid Haiti’s recovery.

IRELAND: They knew their community. The pastors, both their church people and the non-church people, were very aware of where the needs were.

LAWTON: They’ve been rebuilding churches and schools and training people how to construct something that will withstand any earthquakes in the future.

IRELAND: We trained Haitian civil engineers how to build earthquake-resistant buildings, and from that group the Haitian teams went out all over Haiti and did a number of seminars teaching people how to build earthquake-proof buildings.

LAWTON: Across from a UN displacement camp is one of those schools. It isn’t quite finished, but enrollment has already doubled from last year. They are also providing clean water for the entire community.

IRELAND: We really have tried to step alongside the Haitians and say, “Here are the resources we have, here’s the challenge. How do you think we can best do this?”

LAWTON: One local pastor who has been leading the Free Methodist efforts is Jean-Marc Zamor, who also has a larger vision for Haiti. He took us down bumpy roads heading to a remote location where he wants to build a Christian university that will focus on character and leadership development and train people to work in the public sector.

REV. JEAN-MARC ZAMOR: After the earthquake, it’s become more and more difficult to find good professionals, and that’s give me even a higher conviction that this is what we need to do now. We need to train people that will carry on the work.

LAWTON: He and a team of other Haitian leaders used their own money to buy 200 acres of land. They’ve hired local workers to begin pouring the foundation of their first building, and they hope to have students by the fall. He gets frustrated that many outsiders see all Haitians as needy victims.

ZAMOR: There are a lot of people living with cholera, a lot of people in need. But Haiti is not only that. At the same time, there are a lot of people doing a lot of things, a lot of work going on. Otherwise, we would not survive.

LAWTON: Local leaders are also active in the response of Haiti’s Episcopal Church. Crowded Sunday morning services here are now being held in an open-air structure with a tin roof. It’s right next to the ruins of the Holy Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, which was completely destroyed in the quake. The church had been known around the world for its magnificent art work. Once a month, the congregation takes a special offering for the reconstruction of the cathedral. Episcopalians have been active in post-earthquake recovery. I asked the bishop how they will decide whether money should go to helping people or rebuilding the cathedral.

BISHOP JEAN-ZACHE DURACIN (Episcopal Diocese of Haiti): It is a symbol. People may think that, people may say, oh, there are so people in tents and we are going to build big cathedral, and so on. No, it is a symbol of faith. It has always been so.

LAWTON: And, indeed, for many in this predominantly Christian nation faith has been key to survival.

IRELAND: They’re filled with tremendous hope. It’s unbelievable, because it would be so easy just to give up, and they haven’t given up. They really believe that the future can be better.

LAWTON: At the Corail camp, World Vision’s Mary Kate MacIssac says she sees hope in the gardens people are planting near their temporary shelters and in the small businesses that are popping up—and in people like Jeanne’s daughter, Diana. She and her sister wrote a song that says despite the earthquake, they will always believe in God.

MACISSAC: People who continue to believe in a God that loves them is really quite remarkable.

ZAMOR: Haiti is not dying. I think we have taken a lot of time to get started. Once we get started, we will be well on our way, and we will be where we need to be in a couple of years. We are not dying.

LAWTON: Given the enormity of the problems that still exist, that hope is likely to continue being tested.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: Kim, welcome back.

LAWTON: Thank you.

ABERNETHY: How representative, how typical are those people, those hopeful people you talked to?

LAWTON: Well, I was surprised to hear anybody even mention the word “hope,” given the enormity of the situation there, but I did hear people wanting to say we are moving forward. Yet no one is suggesting that things are great or things are where they should be. There’s a lot of frustration. A lot of people are tired. And so that is definitely the reality, but within that they are hopeful that they are laying the basis for some real long-term improvement.

ABERNETHY: But the general impression I have is that most people here think that these relief efforts, these emergency efforts, are not going very well and that they are taking an awful long time.

LAWTON: I kept hearing a lot of frustration in Haiti about that criticism. They are saying look, we’ve been doing so much but the situation has been so complicated. I talked to one relief worker. She’d been in Gaza. She’d been in Iraq. She just came from Afghanistan straight to Haiti, and she said Haiti is a lot more difficult than any of those other places, and people in the outside don’t realize that. They don’t realize the realities they are dealing with and the layer upon layer of complication that make things take time.

ABERNETHY: What are the worst problems?

LAWTON: Well, obviously the government. There’s been a government in transition. We are awaiting a new election. There’s been political unrest surrounding that. A lot of the international money is tied to the government having a plan, and so the donors from the outside don’t want to give money or legally can’t give the money unless the government has a master plan. Well, if there’s not a good government, a strong government, there’s no government plan, then that money can’t come in and people can’t move forward. That’s one problem. There’s corruption. Haiti was in a bad situation before the earthquake, very little infrastructure, and so all of those things piled together on top of they also had a hurricane and then the cholera epidemic. So it’s just complication upon complication.

ABERNETHY: There are two phases—the relief effort, the emergency relief effort which seems to be going on still a year later, and on the other hand long-term development, investment in new jobs and things like that. When are we going to get—when are the Haitians going to get to that second phase?

LAWTON: Well, some of it’s happening hand in hand, or the beginning of development is happening even as relief work is going forward. A lot of the Haitians I spoke with want to do it themselves. They want to be able to be self-sustaining, and they believe that for any lasting solution that’s the way it’s going to have to be. But they admit that takes time, and so that’s part of the problem as well.

]]>KIM LAWTON, anchor: It was a demanding week for global humanitarian groups as they raced to get emergency help to Chile even as they continued relief efforts in Haiti. More than 800 people were killed and two million left homeless by last weekend’s earthquake and tsunami along Chile’s coast. Faith-based groups were among those delivering immediate aid and assessing the potential long-term needs. At the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI offered special prayers for the victims in this predominantly Catholic country. Meanwhile, work continues in Haiti after the devastating earthquake there. Heavy rains have been complicating efforts to provide shelter to hundreds of thousands of displaced people. The dual catastrophes are posing major challenges for humanitarian groups. Joining me to talk about that is Richard Stearns, president of the US offices of World Vision. World Vision is the largest US-based international relief and development organization.

Rich, let’s start with Chile. What are the major challenges there right now? How are you working there?

RICHARD STEARNS (President, World Vision): Well, I think one of the challenges that we’re facing in Chile is that the damage is very wide spread. In Haiti it was very concentrated in Port-au-Prince, but in Chile it’s spread out over hundreds of miles of coastline. But the challenges we’re facing are typical of an earthquake. You’ve got a lot of homeless people that are living outside of their homes. They may have lost their homes or they’ve been compromised. Power has been cut off, water and sanitation have often been cut off, and of course now they are dependent on aid organizations and the government for food, water, and sanitation and those kinds of things. So, as we know, this was one of the biggest earthquakes of the last 50 years, and it did quite a bit of damage.

LAWTON: Are we seeing the same kind of mobilization that there was for Haiti?

STEARNS: Well, certainly organizations like World Vision are mobilizing. The Chilean government, the US government are mobilizing to help. But the donor response has been just a fraction of what we experienced for Haiti. Unfortunately, I think donor fatigue, these two disasters being so close together, we believe that Chile is not going to see nearly the level of donations that we experienced for Haiti.

LAWTON: Well, I was going to ask you about that. How does an organization like yours deal with that, when you’ve got these two really major disasters going on at the same time? How do you allocate resources and figure out where to put all of your energy?

STEARNS: Well, believe it or not, World Vision responds in a typical year to about 75 natural disasters around the world. Most of them aren’t on the scale of Haiti or Chile, but we have a global response team that’s kind of like the Navy Seals, and we are staffed so that we can respond to two massive catastrophes simultaneously. So we sent a huge team into Haiti. We sent about 50 people in. We’ve got about 1,000 people in country in Haiti responding right now. Many of them were there before the earthquake. Chile—we had 100 employees in Chile before the earthquake, and we are now sending in relief teams. We have prepositioned supplies in warehouses all over the world just ready to ship in for a catastrophe just like this. So a lot of it is preparedness, and organizations like World Vision are structured to be prepared to respond to multiple disasters.

LAWTON: And then how do you address that donor fatigue that you mentioned, so that you have the resources continuing to come in, not just for Haiti and Chile but for all the other problems around the world as well?

STEARNS: Well, that is a challenge, but World Vision has about one million US donors, and we probably have about four million donors worldwide who give to our organization. So we can usually count on them to step up and be generous when we contact them and talk to them about what we’re doing to respond. But the general public—we are concerned in this case that the general public is not going to respond at the same level that they did for Haiti or anywhere near that level. So that means we will probably have to rely more on government grants from donor governments to help us in the response.

LAWTON: Alright, Richard Stearns with World Vision. Thank you so much.